The use of bibliometric indicators to help peer-review assessment.

International audienceInserm is the only French public research institution entirely dedicated to human health. Inserm supports research across the biomedical spectrum in all major disease areas, from fundamental lab-based science to clinical trials. To translate its scientists' findings into tangible health benefits, Inserm has its own affiliated company, Inserm Transfert, which works with industry. Since 2001, Inserm has been setting up on-line file management software for the evaluation of researchers and laboratories, called EVA ( www.eva.inserm.fr ). EVA includes all grant applications, assessment reports, evaluation grading evaluation forms and includes automated bibliometric indicator software that enables calculating, for example, the number of publications, journal impact factors, number of citations, citation index, and number of the Top 1 publications for each researcher of the teams. The indicators take into account research fields, the year of publications, and the author's position among the participants. Bibliometrics is now considered a tool for science policy providing indicators to measure productivity and scientific quality, thereby supplying a basis for evaluating and orienting R&D. It is also a potential tool for evaluation. It is neutral, allows comparative (national and international) assessment, and may select papers in the forefront in all fields. For each team, bibliometric indicators are calculated for all researchers with permanent or long-term positions (3-5 years). The use of bibliometric indicators requires great vigilance, but according to our experience they enrich the committee's debates without any doubt. We present an analysis of the data of 600 research teams evaluated in 2007-2008

Automated grading of research performance clearly fails to measure up.

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Zoom sur l’excellence en recherche biomédicale en France

La production de connaissances et sa reconnaissance par la communauté scientifique sont des critères incontournables de l’évaluation de la qualité d’une recherche. Les indicateurs bibliométriques de plus en plus utilisés par les décideurs pour orienter leur stratégie font toujours l’objet de nombreux débats. Dans cet article, nous analysons la performance de la France en utilisant principalement deux indicateurs sélectifs obtenus à partir de la base de l’Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) : le nombre absolu d’articles et la proportion publiée, dans les journaux ayant un très fort impact - supérieur à 20 - ainsi que dans le Top 1 % des articles biomédicaux les plus cités. À partir de ces données, nous identifions les domaines dominants, les sites les plus actifs pour chacune des spécialités et le réseau de collaborations nationales et internationales. Nos résultats montrent que la recherche biomédicale française contribue fortement aux avancées scientifiques mondiales et que sa qualité atteint les standards internationaux les plus élevés.Among the key benchmarks in assessing research excellence is the production and recognition of scientific discoveries for innovation. Despite the growing use of bibliometric indicators for policy-making purposes, there is still no consensus concerning the appropriate measures of research excellence. In this study, we examine the performance of France in biomedical sciences using several ISI-based indicators. We focus on the results provided by these two selective indicators: the absolute numbers and proportion of papers published in the very high-impact journals (above 20) and in the 1 % of the most highly cited papers. Furthermore, we present the detailed analysis of the Top 1 % French biomedical articles. On this basis we identify the crucial fields, the most active centres per speciality and the networks and the degree of international collaboration resulting from different types of research. These results provide an objective demonstration that the French biomedical research meets with high international standards and contributes to the world core research

Cytochrome P 450 induction by DDT in the pig and concomitent reduction of retinol

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